SAVE A PENNY, LOSE A LIFE

Cuts In State Drug-Treatment Programs

If a single crime-prevention program could be picked as giving Florida the
best mileage for its money, it would be drug treatment for offenders behind
bars and under supervision outside prison.

By conservative estimates, about a third of all crimes committed in Florida
are drug-related. Many judges who deal with the consequences of the street
wars in our cities believe that this figure is much higher. They are
appalled, and rightly so, that the state's Department of Corrections has
approved a $13 million cut in its drug-treatment programs for offenders in
and out of prison. The decision to make this cut is simply unfathomable.

These programs' success in rehabilitating addicts who committed crimes
primarily to feed their habits has been a contributing factor in the
state's reduced crime rate.

Consider the numbers:

Of offenders who completed drug-treatment programs inside prisons, 70.5
percent stayed out of trouble once released.

Of offenders completing a treatment program outside the prison system, 77.5
percent remained out of prison for at least two years.

These percentages don't represent small numbers. Florida incarcerates
72,000 inmates in its prisons, and 17,000 of them participated in
drug-treatment programs last year. That roughly corresponds to the
one-third rate of drug-related crimes. Another 32,640 offenders got
treatment in residential or outpatient facilities as part of work- release
or other supervised corrections programs.

Drug treatment without jail time also derails crime-bent lives, as every
judge in the state's Drug Courts can attest. These programs, especially in
Broward and Miami-Dade counties, also will be reduced if the DOC's budget
cut isn't restored. Six residential programs in Broward and Miami-Dade will
lose a total of 94 beds -- and there always are waiting lists in these
facilities. The DOC reductions will handicap several other treatment
programs in South Florida as well.

The reductions are ill-advised in another way, for these viable programs
are supplemented by federal grants, returning even more value to the state
for its investment.

If the Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush don't restore these cuts, a new class
of untreated offenders will return to Florida's communities over the next
few years. They'll have had no help in kicking their habits and little, if
any, job training while in prison. Add to this prospect an increased number
of violators who might have turned their lives around through Drug Court
monitoring and treatment but can't for lack of adequate resources.

It makes no economic sense to cripple crime-prevention programs that are
proven successes. Funding for offenders' drug-treatment programs must be
restored.